Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a method for examining potential failures in products or processes. FMEA helps selecting remedial actions that reduce cumulative impacts of life-cycle consequences (risks) from a systems failure (fault). FMEA is frequently used in conjunction with design and manufacturing processes, and has found many applications in the automotive, aerospace and biomedical industries, and in other safety critical or security related industries.
The use of FMEA in performing gate level timing simulations of the designs of digital electronic devices is especially prevalent. Unfortunately, such simulations have become increasingly time consuming to run as the number of gates in the designs of such devices has increased. For example, at present, the designs of many digital devices contain several million gates. Hence, a need exists in the art to reduce the time required for such simulations, without sacrificing the ability of the simulation to identify critical faults in the design.